The war for virtual control

It is not called the world wide web for nothing. The internet has become a universal resource with a vital role in education - and search engines are now most people's way of accessing it. Given that level of influence, it is obviously unhealthy for too much potential power to be vested in a single search engine.
So, as Google gets ever stronger, it becomes harder for it to live up to its slogan, “Don't be evil”, which initially set it apart from other companies. If nothing else, Microsoft's unwelcome bid to buy Yahoo in an attempt to combat Google's power provides an opportunity to reflect on the importance of web search and to ask whether it should be dominated by a single company.
This story has so far been a corporate drama; on April 28 market-watchers were talking about an extended period of trench warfare for the IT giants. But it is also important to establish where the consumer interest lies. Google's dominance has been built up organically, rather than with the strong-arm tactics Microsoft used to maintain its 90 per cent monopoly of PC operating systems and associated software such as Word and Excel. If Google continues its recent rate of growth, however, it will not be long before it could command 80 per cent of the search market. The proposed merger has been about how other players could combat Google's increasing arm lock on search and the El Dorado of advertising that goes with it.
A scenario in which Microsoft takes over Yahoo, an erstwhile hero of the dot.com boom, would mean that competition in search would be reduced from three big players to two. In the short run this could provide stronger competition for Google (even though a combined Microsoft/Yahoo would still have barely 16per cent of the search market) but at the expense of fewer strong players in the field. There is also no guarantee that a merged Microsoft/Yahoo would make a stronger competitor. It is a matter of record that most mergers fail and the marriage of cultures as diverse as Microsoft and Yahoo would surely have less chance that most others, especially in the charged aftermath of a hostile bid. The best outcome would be to leave the three giants to battle it out, a scenario some of Microsoft's own senior managers are said to prefer. Microsoft could concentrate on fighting Google organically in the areas Microsoft is weakest - search and the trend to host services on the web, rather than on a home computer.
Quite simply, three giants are better than two. Yahoo and Microsoft, or an as yet unknown start-up, are capable of challenging Google. The company's dominance, though a cause for concern, is not structurally embedded. Google's engine pops up on many desktops as the default but it is still possible to change the setting. There is no reason why Google's power could decline in a short period of time, as Altavista's once supreme search engine did a few years ago. This could happen if one of dozens of rival engines finds a better way to search reflecting, say, users' personal interests rather than the number and quality of links that each page attracts (Google's strong point). Some search engines, including Yahoo's, are already difficult to tell apart from Google in a blind tasting. In mobile search - using phones and handheld devices - Yahoo is ahead. It is not a small company needing help: it has an estimated 120bn page views a month.
If fresh competition does not emerge and Google starts operating against the public interest, then strong action may be necessary - but not yet. A worrying aspect of all this is that there is no international institution to exercise a global judgment. The main players may be American but their activities are international. If, for instance, the US were to approve a Yahoo/Microsoft merger but the EU turned it down while Japan and the rest of Asia wanted something else, then chaos could ensue. We have arrived at the global village but have yet to find a village bobby.